Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has been handed a £419,000 bonus out of a maximum £458,000.
The pay award comes despite a major revolt against it from shareholders as the airline has furloughed staff, cancelled flights, taken state handouts and lost billions in revenue as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the end, shareholders voted through a package with 65.8% support, seeing O'Leary handed £3.2 million overall in the financial year that ended in March.
O'Leary's bonus is calculated based on Ryanair's profit and his personal performance. Since the pandemic hit, Ryanair bosses have halved their salaries.
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), an advisory group, said earlier this month that shareholders should vote against the company's remuneration plans.
It said that during the pandemic Ryanair has taken £600million from a Bank of England support scheme, put many of its staff on furlough, and plans to cut around 3,000 jobs.
In July Ryanair revealed it lost £168 million in a single quarter, as restrictions saw the company carry just 500,000 passengers compared with 41.9 million in the same period last year. Revenue collapsed from £2.1 billion to £113million.
"Many of the larger UK listed companies in less-challenging circumstances than Ryanair have either deferred or cancelled executive bonus payouts altogether in light of the current climate, in a show of solidarity with key stakeholder groups such as employees and shareholders," ISS said.
It added: "Given the current state of upheaval in the industry and the uncertain outlook, as well as the wider stakeholder experience, it is difficult to justify a payment equal to c. 92% of maximum opportunity to the CEO, regardless of performance against 2020 financial year targets."
It is the second year in a row that O'Leary's pay has been only narrowly passed by shareholders.
Last year his pay package was even more controversial, with only 51% of shareholders voting in its favour.
Since then O'Leary's base salary and the maximum bonus he can receive, has been halved.
At the start of the pandemic O'Leary agreed to further reduce his base salary by half to €250,000 for the current fiscal year, because of the Covid-19 uncertainty.
ISS said that slashing executive pay had become "expected practice" for companies getting taxpayer support and it "does not address concerns around his bonus".
